BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The GSMA's Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme today released the findings of its second annual Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey. The report analyses the state of the mobile money industry in 2012 and illustrates key findings from the programme's Mobile Money Deployment Tracker, a database that monitors the number of live and planned mobile money services for the unbanked across the globe. The annual survey was developed to quantify the state of the mobile money industry and to enable mobile money providers to benchmark their performance.

The research shows the number of active mobile money users grew impressively; more than 30 million people undertook 224.2 million transactions totalling $4.6 billion during the month of June 2012 alone. This exceeds the 196.3 million transactions performed by Paypal customers on average each month during Q3 2012 1. The study demonstrates that the mobile money industry continues to expand at an unparalleled rate, with 150 live mobile money services for the unbanked, 41 of which were launched in 2012. In addition, the industry is also becoming increasingly competitive, with 40 markets identified as having at least two different mobile money services available.

"The social impact of mobile money is already well documented, and our report last year offered the first global benchmarks on how many customers were using mobile money," said Chris Locke, Managing Director, GSMA Mobile for Development. "Following our second Mobile Money Adoption Survey, we are able to share deeper insights on the number of customers, on how customers are actually using the service and, perhaps more importantly, on how successful operators are positioning and managing mobile money to meet the needs of those customers."

Rapid Growth, Particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa The report counted 81.8 million registered customers globally and with the total number of deployments on a global basis growing by almost 38 per cent, an increasing number of deployments are also achieving significant scale. The report identified six services with more than 1 million active customer accounts and in the last 12 months, three of these services have crossed the 1 million active customers threshold. The number of active customer accounts is now growing rapidly which is a positive sign indicating that customers are realising the benefits from mobile money services.

There are 56.9 million registered customers in sub-Saharan Africa and in June 2012, there were twice as many mobile money users as Facebook users in the region. In terms of geographical spread, more than half of all countries in sub-Saharan Africa have live deployments and 37 per cent of the 166 mobile networks operators in the region have already launched mobile money. Mobile money services are available in 34 of the 47 countries in the region and penetration will continue to grow in the region, since the majority of planned deployments are also in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mobile Money Contributing to Financial Inclusion Data within the report gives an interesting insight into the contribution of mobile money to financial inclusion globally. There are now more mobile money accounts than bank accounts in Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda, and more mobile money agent outlets than bank branches in at least 28 countries. With over 520,000 registered agent outlets, there are now as many mobile money outlets as Western Union points of sale. Further, in some countries, the total value of mobile money transactions is equivalent to a significant proportion of the country's overall GDP; in June 2012, it was equivalent to more than 60 per cent of GDP in Kenya, more than 30 per cent of GDP in Tanzania, and more than 20 per cent of GDP in Uganda.

Locke added, "As the mobile money industry is maturing, we can expect to see both the social and financial benefits of mobile money increase and will continue to track this fantastic progress."

Notes to Editors Methodology: Standardised operational metrics were supplied by 78 mobile money deployments from 49 countries. The full questionnaire including the list of metrics and their definitions is included in the report. The responses collected through this survey were checked for internal consistency, but all data all self-reported and were not verified independently by the GSMA.

About the GSMA The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo.

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com